Wednesday, December 31, 2003

I hate Thursdays. To-day's Wednesday but it's acting like Thursday so I have little time.

Last night, Tim gave me a Christmas present which he'd ordered for me a while ago but just not came in the mail. It's a collection of Studio Ghibli movies. Cool guy, that Tim. While I was at his house, I took advantage of some of his connexions in Utah and purchased over a thousand dollars worth of DVDs for merely one hundred forty dollars. And that was very nice. So in about a week I shall have the entire Evangelion TV series and movies on DVD, the entire Cowboy Bebop series and movie, plus soundtrack CD, all of the Ranma 1/2 OVAs, and the enitre Slayers television series. All on DVD.

Tuesday, December 30, 2003

I think I could beat Garfield in the sleeping marathon.

I didn't want to wake up to-day. I suppose if I got to work on one of my many projects I'd feel better . . .

Watched The Two Towers extended edition with my sister last night. For a while, I feared she might not connect with the last hour of it for being in a snit about this long movie keeping her up to 11pm. But, thankfully, by the end she seemed to feel it'd been worth it.

Still, I noticed she missed some of the best moments to play with her dog. She missed Gandalf's charge with the Rohirrum and Legolas's famous horse mounting procedure.

And she does not believe she'll be able to sit through Return of the King. I hope I'll be able to convince her otherwise. She believes she has ADD and I'd like to show her she's capable of getting involved in something of such long duration.

Monday, December 29, 2003

Got the Mullholland Drive soundtrack yesterday. Picked it up at Tower Records where I had gone to buy a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode, but got this instead. I was surprised to see it, for some reason. I didn't think there'd been a sountrack released for the movie.

There's a snippet taken from a track on the Lost Hightway soundtrack, although it's not credited as such in the CD jacket. I'd noticed it when watching the movie.

Most of the music is very, very subtle. Listening to it on the way back from Tower Records, I could hardly hear it, even though I'd turned up the volume very high. Then, there's sudden spikes of loud. Which I kind of like--it makes me smile that people are being forced to listen to music loud.

There's also the Spanish version of Roy Orbison's "Crying" and a track written by David Lynch and John Neff called "Mountains Falling."

It's a good soundtrack. Mostly filled with the stuff of Angelo Badalamenti, the kind of stuff that makes soundtracks to David Lynch movies great to listen to.

At 2am, I found myself watching Darkwing Duck on Toon Disney. I like Darkwing Dark. I like the character. The writing in the episode I saw was . . . palatable. I like how characters in that show used guns. Hard to imagine, but just seven or eight years ago, that was okay in a kids cartoon.

At 4am, I watched DuckTales, which was an even greater stride down memory lane. Those were the days when the people making kids shows didn't usually figure the kids wanted some annoying, super-zany character. Well, there are a few shows not like that nowadays--Pokemon's fine, for example. I think the problem is that adults are annoyed by these shows, so they assume that kids like annoying things, and write for them accordingly. That's why Freakazoid didn't work and it's why everyone hates Jar-Jar Binks. It's not that I think the creators are conscious themselves of the annoying quotient of their creations, merely that they have gorged themselves on annoyance-vaccines.

This morning--or, really, this afternoon, for people who keep sane sleeping schedules--I found that the television was still on Toon Disney, and so I watched some of the brand new Mickey, Donald, and Goofy cartoons. These aren't very good cartoons. They're quite bad, in fact. They have much the same problem as the new Looney Tunes cartoons; the writers don't understand the sensibility with which the old cartoons were written.

And it's a shame. These new cartoons have good animation, although not the lush, more unpredictable animation of the old cartoons. It's mainly the writing--old gags and fall sound effects are used Because They Must Be and not because they come from real comedy-logic. Donald's been made impotent, prevented from using some of his old violent tricks when dealing with his foes. Yes, true, he always was impotent. But his impotence had a kind of meaning back then. You could look at what he was doing and say, "Jeez, this guys pullin' out all the stops and still nothing." Now his actions are sanitised and empty.

This unconscious campaign for the destruction of all things biological is kind of doomed, I think.

Saturday, December 27, 2003

Got lots of DVDs yesterday. Went to Best Buy to get another Farscape DVD and ended up buying two Farscape DVDs, a Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes DVD, and, while I was waiting in the checkout line, I spotted The Big Lebowsky for ten dollars and nabbed it too.

There're two episodes on the Sherlock Holmes DVD and I've watched one--The Priory School. One of the most atmospheric of the Jeremy Brett Holmes series I've seen. And it's wonderfully dreary.

One of the Farscape DVDs I got is the first of the fourth season, and I was happy to find that it was formatted for widescreen televisions. So I watched it on the widescreen television upstairs, and the whole thing felt more cinematic.

Now I ought to do something to-day on the road to getting things done . . .

Friday, December 26, 2003

The gift I received the most for Christmas (I think four times) was the whimsically unlabelled Starbucks gift card. I have no idea how much money is on most of them, making each coffee purchase an enlivening game of Russian roulette.

All in all, it was a good Christmas, better than I've had in a while. I'd say the high point was reading Caitlin's journal entry.

I woke up to-day at 1pm--a big difference from yesterday's 6am. And I feel better. I stayed up until 3am, first talking to Cryptess, then playing Pictionary with Ha, then watching Eddie Izzard--I really did manage to stay up far later than my body felt like it wanted to. I call that--Victory!

I'm wondering if I'm something of a schmuck.

I'm gonna tell you this story and I want you to tell me if I'm justified in feeling kind of burned:

Okay. Everyone asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Mostly I couldn't answer--I was having enough trouble trying to figure out what to get everyone else. But once, when I was at Lake Arrowhead and my mother asked me, it hit me; I wanted the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD. I mentioned it, and my mother said, "Okay."

Now, I'd almost forgotten about it by Christmas. If I'd never seen it on Christmas day, I don't think I would have been bothered. But Christmas morning, at around 9am, when I'm opening presents with my parents and sister, suddenly my mother brings up a package to "the family" from Bella, the new dog (a tiny, adorable, half Chihuahua, half Yorkie thing). It was the Indiana Jones trilogy--"In widescreen!" my mother points out to me because, most of the time, I'm the only one who cares about that.

So basically, it's like I received it for Christmas. Only I can't watch it most of the time. I can't watch it on my own. I can't lend it to someone if I wanted to. I can't take it with me. Hurrah.

Well, okay, maybe I am schmuck. I'm certainly not gonna bring this up with them. Why sow animosity? And after all, they are buying me new contact lenses and they gave me two Nightmare Before Christmas shirts--that I genuinely like--from when they went to Disneyland without me a few months ago.

I went with them to see Cold Mountain and I fear I may have unintentionally soured the experience when, after the movie, I talked about how I didn't think it was Anthony Minghella's best movie by any means, that while it had some nice components, the whole wasn't so great. I talked about how, in some movies, I find over-prettification to be insulting and disturbing. I didn't like the juxtaposition of very realistic, bloody Civil War battles against the idea that in this reality, Nicole Kidman and Rene Zellweger will always look as perfect as magazine perfume advertisements, no matter how rugged their situation and setting, and Kidman's love scene with Jude Law shall look like an advertisement for Godiva chocolates, even though they're making love in an abandoned wood shed in the snow covered forest.

Returning here last night, I received a new journal book from my aunt. I mean, three journal books with a very nice, interchangeable sleeve cover for all of them. I mean, it's really nice. I'm happy to have it.

I sat down to watch the rest of the Farscape DVD I'd gotten on the 24th only to find, halfway through an episode, that the DVD had a warp in it that prevented the DVD-ROM from reading it further. Annoying.

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Having done all of my laundry a couple days ago, I now have all my favourite outfits again at my disposal--ah! It's been a long time since I last saw many of these. To-day I'm wearing my "uniform"--one of several pairs of black button shirts and black slacks. I feel like "me" in these clothes.

Watched Johnny Belinda last night. It was basically a great movie, particularly for Jane Wyman's terribly brilliant performance. I had two issues with it, though;

1) The title still doesn't make sense to me. The movie's primarily about Belinda, played by Jane Wyman. So where does the Johnny come from? Halfway through the movie, I was starting to become convinced that it was the Nova Scotia (where the story takes place) version of "Bonny", thereby making the title something like "Pretty Belinda." But then we learn that "Johnny" is what Belinda decides to name her baby. Since the baby never becomes more than a prop in the movie--something for everyone to react to, and mostly as an element in Belinda's life--and never becomes a character, his name being in the title is confusing. And its coupling with Belinda even moreso as Belinda does have a last name.

2) I'm not sure the tidy Hollywood movie of the 40s is really the best place for a story about rape. In a way, it's rather cruel suggesting that everything'll come up roses by the end. But then again, maybe there is some value in saying that sometimes things do work out--although the movie almost seems to suggest that they do so in a way that effectively erases the hurts of that awful experience. Yet, on another hand, it did feel good seeing the guy getting shot.

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

Went to see The Return of the King again last night, this time with Tim, and this time with a better sound system. Afterwards, he and I talked about how they simply do not make movies like that anymore. Or maybe a movie like that has never been made. But judging from the agonisingly giggly reaction of the audience, modern American audiences are not equiped to deal with the sight of men crying and expressing love for each other. In addition to basking in the glow of a great movie, I was also feeling pretty sad about humanity as we left the theatre.

When Tim said, "They're not worth worrying about," I thought to myself, "Yeah, but we're surrounded by them."

But back to whether or not there's ever been movies like this: I thought there was something very Errol Flynn-ish about Legolas taking down the Oliphant. The sight of Aragorn in kingly attire also reminded me of something from an old Lawrence Olivier movie.

Monday, December 22, 2003

Yesterday I wrote lots and lots. I was on quite a roll. I stopped only when Trisa came by wearing a great coat. She and I went for dinner at an Olive Garden in Carmel Mountain. Wish I could say it was a pleasant evening but in fact I came home feeling like someone had taken my hat and had begun stomping and pissing on it before stomping and pissing on me. So let's not dwell on that . . .

Later last night, I watched Possessed, with Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. It was a very simple, very cute movie. Its chief virtue being its dwelling on the existence of Joan Crawford, which it did rather well.

I didn't get to sleep until 5am--not for any particular reason. I kept getting up, thinking there was something I was going to do. But mostly all I ended up doing was urinating.

Lucky the cat, who seems to want a lot of attention these days, tried sleeping next to me again. Much more successful this time as he found a more strategic spot, one where I didn't have to scrunch up my legs uncomfortably. But at around 8am, he woke me up to let him out.

I then woke up at around noon. Lots of people came to the door and I had no answers or money for them.

In the midst of writing this entry, I received a package from an aunt and uncle in Tennessee. It's a cake of some kind, I think. It smells nice, anyway.

Sunday, December 21, 2003

Spent a lot of time on ICQ yesterday talking to Cryptess, Richard, and Ha. Unlike many people who use ICQ regularly, I guess I consider it more of an event than a casual interchange because I just very much don't have a head for multitasking. Kind of pathetic, I know, but when I do multitask, I get kind of an adrenaline rush. I felt proud that I was simultaneously talking to all three people, playing Defend Your Castle, writing yesterday's blog entry, and then watching some Brian Mung flash movies Richard'd recommended to me. When I finally signed off, I felt like I'd been on a spirited gallop through the countryside while I'm sure all other participants were just idly killing time and chewing the fat.

Of course, this means that in the process of accomplishing very little I felt like I'd done a lot. I'm gonna need to make up for that to-day.

Last night I went to my parents' house for dinner and we played a somewhat annoying game called "Seen-It!" that was supposedly a game about testing one's movie knowledge but which often times tended to be more about piecing images together to make words or other things that required a mind quicker than my very slow one.

I guess the generally thrust of this post is . . . I'm too slow for most of the other reindeers' games. But I seem to enjoy myself most of the time, merrily skipping along a mile behind the herd.

After my parents', I went to Tim's where I beat his score in Soul Calibur 2 team battle. That is, the score he set while playing on medium difficulty mode. I was playing on ultra-hard. So there are some things I can do!

Saturday, December 20, 2003

This morning I've taped Harvey and Treasure Island(1934). I've never seen either but am looking forward to watching them . . . Of course, I did put them on tape 23 and I've only through to watching tape 6, which was Lawrence of Arabia.

One of the things that particularly impressed me about Lawrence was how real it all was . . . In those days long before cgi and a number of other fancy modern tricks, they had to do actual armies of camels and horses through actual cities . . . Blow up actual trains . . . It all feels great.

Next I have Ossessione to watch, which should be a good chaser for Double Indemnity . . .

Friday, December 19, 2003

I . . . am . . . insured! With the car I am, anyway. No health insurance. No accident insurance with double indemnity clause that Barbara Stanwyck might be able to take advantage of.

Just got the call this morning so now it looks like I shall again be able to enlist my automobile in my regular campaigns of goofing off--which is actually the only thing I've found the car to be useful for, but there's something to be said for goofing off, to be sure.

And last night, I at long last received my copy of Double Indemnity in the mail. For new, the movie costs around eighty dollars but luckily Tim was able to find a Taiwanese bootleg version for only ten dollars. It has a few little quirks, like default cantonese subtitles (but they can be turned off), a little white line at the top of the screen, no end credits, and the omission of Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck from the DVD case cover--The cover would have you believe that the movie primarily stars Porter Hall and Jean Heather.

But all in all, I'm very happy to have this movie. I suppose I oughtn't to have been watching it whilst waiting for a call from my insurance company . . .

And yesterday, Ha and I watched Head, starring the Monkees, screenplay by a young Jack Nicholson. It was strange, and it wanted to mean something--that much I can deduce from its somewhat tasteless use of actual footage of a guy getting shot in the head. But it all adds up to no more than a goofy romp, which was kinna fun, at times.

Thursday, December 18, 2003

So Return of the King was fabulous. I had this moment of extreme, genuine dread when Eowyn confronted the Witch King. Probably just me though--I dunno. Something about that moment filled me with the utter certainty that this thing was all too powerful for little Eowyn with her plain steel sword. And this is in spite of the fact that I've read the book. I literally trembled and my eyes teared up. It was the most extreme reaction I have had to anything in these movies . . .

I'm almost finished Caitlin R Kiernan's Low Red Moon, which is a terrific book, even better than Threshold.

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Last night was the last night of the Acorn Review class. Last night, something kind of cool happened.

A girl showed up to class in her pyjamas. For many, this would be a bad fashion choice, but it certainly was a good one for Ha (the name of the girl we're talking about) whose pyjamas consisted of what looked like a thick, blue silk kimono (yes, this really was her pyjamas).

As folks were clearing out of the room, and I approached the exit, I couldn't help feeling sorry I hadn't gotten to know Ha better.

It was then that I heard that young lady's voice calling for halt, saying, "I want to talk to you."

I turned around to see her extraordinarily tiny finger pointed in my direction but I, nontheless, said, "Me?"

"Yes."

So Ha and I went for a walk and we decided that we had similer tastes and stuff and that we were going to be friends. Also, it was decided that she was going to give me a ride home, which was very nice indeed as I was dreading the typical hour+ walk home through the very chill air.

But first, we stopped by her very fascinating house where she showed me Bjork videos I'd never seen and I introduced her to Samurai Jack.

Monday, December 15, 2003

A very brief phone conversation with Trisa this morning brought very strongly to me the realisation that I've been closely associating her with the American Super Mario Brothers 2 (or the Japanese Doiki Doiki Panic!) for some time. After hanging up the phone, I was unable to remove the musics of Mario 2 from my mind.

I don't know exactly why this is. I think maybe there's something of her temperment in the atmosphere of that game.

I managed to frighten children yester-day. Jolly good fun, that.

I was at Tim's workplace (RadioShack). It was about five minutes before the store closed and he and I were both itching to leave and do fun stuffs. Then, in walks two twelve year-old-ish wouldbe thugs who begin walking around the store with their backs to us, opening the battery cases of various display items, looking for batteries to steal.

Now, it's not that I have anything particularly against shoplifting, especially as Tim says the store itself makes quite a steal on batteries, charging very much more than is paid for the batteries originally. But, again, he and I wanted to go and, anyway, I couldn't resist the "plausible" oportunity to spook kids.

So I started following them around the store.

When they passed from handheld digital sound recorders to heavy headphones, I said to them, "You two must be into sound. I bet that's what it is."

"No," says the taller one, trying to discourage conversation with his lacklustre response.

Undetered, I continued; "See, I've been standing here, bored I guess, trying to figure out what you kids were looking for--Ah! I bet you're in a band!"

"We're just looking around," said the tall one. I figured that, by this point, anyone not up to something shady would have been more confrontational towards me. So I kept following them. I talked them about the keyboard they played with, asking if they were piano enthusiasts and were they sure they weren't in a band?

When they started playing with the megaphones (which of course had no batteries), I said, "Now there's some bad motherfuckers. I bet you can make sound with that." They proceeded to just start clicking and pressing the various buttons on the things, so I said, "Yeah, yeah! Isn't that great? Buttons are so fucking great. You know--when I was a kid, I had one of those big panel things with buttons all over it and, boy, I sure never got tired of pressing them and clicking them. And you know what's cool? There's so many devices for adults now that have buttons on them! So fucking adictive. I could just click, click, click all day!"

Sunday, December 14, 2003

Yester-day, Caitlin uploaded the latest chapter I drew of The Adventures of Nar'eth to Nebari.net (for those of you who're wondering, Leh'agvoi is my Nebari name. Or perhaps Setsuled is the alias, hmmm!).

I also did a sloppy new page of Doll Merchant. But sloppy is sexy, ne?

I also wrote an awful lot yesterday. I hurt my hand. But then, my hand seems to get cramps awful easy lately. Before it was only when I was playing Soul Calibur 2, but now it strikes even when I'm playing Morrowind or, like I said, when I'm writing. I've chosen to call it writer's cramp, while Tim has chosen to call it carpal tunnel syndrome.

My horoscope told me to use to-day for having fun as I'm likely to be good for nothing this day. I think I'll take its advice very seriously. I think I'll buy some glue for my plastic Enterprise -D model . . .

When I first turned the computer on this morning, for some reason the keyboard wasn't working. I posted on a friend's journal by copying and pasting one letter at a time from a txt file. I'm glad everything worked again when I restarted the computer . . .

Saturday, December 13, 2003

I walked very quickly last night back from Tim's house. It usually takes me an hour to walk from there to here, but last night I did it in forty minutes. Five minutes before the movie started that I wanted to tape. It was a breathless, exciting victory.

To-day, I definitely vow to get lots of stuff done. After I've eaten waffles.

You know, I'm really filled with a lot of energy to-day. I think I might get a lot of things done. Laundry amongst those things.

Friday, December 12, 2003

FACT: I do not enjoy filling out insurance forms.

But enough of that.

Downtown yester-day, I saw a gorgeous 7-foot tall girl with orange hair, an old woman with a theraputic walking staff, and a Japanese business man who'd contrived a little game wherein he stood in a corner with his head down, pushing two toothpicks around with the tip of his umbrella.

I managed to buy two whole Christmas presents while I was there.

I'm on my way, yeah.

Lucky the cat tried to sleep with me last night but he's huge and did not fit comfortably on the bed. Still, he loves that spot and didn't give up until around 5am, when I awoke to hear him scratching at the door.

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Okay, okay! Frell this sluggishness! I'm gonna get all sorts of things done to-day, oh, just you watch!

In fact, I already stayed up until the wee hours writing, and now here I am, awakened bright and early at 11:30! Time. To. Get. It. ON! HUAH!

I think I'll also go look for the new issue of 1602 . . .

This computer is starting to annoy me again. It's making some very obtrusive noises, sort of like a lawn mower. I'm betting this is a sign of things worse than annoying noises. But right now my beef is that it got in the way of me watching for the billionth time Francis Ford Coppela's Dracula a few nights ago.

*ahem* Yes. Sorry. What was that about you may ask? Well, fuck you for asking, it happens to be very personal and . . . Yeah.

Once, in High School, in P.E., people wre picking teams for some game or another. I'd been more sociable than usual that day so maybe that's why I felt vaguely sad that no one wanted to play with me. It was one of the very, very few occasions in my life where I was uncomfortable with the fact that I was abnormal.

For some reason, I mentioned this to my mother, and of course her advice was that I try to change and be more like the other kids.

I think this whole story's pretty obvious and I think anyone reading knows exactly what's so fucked up about my mother's advice.

Even so, to this day I still occasionally have to remind myself that being the kind of freak I am doesn't come without it's price. Sometimes I do see a pretty patch of green on the other lawn. I just have to remind myself that from all the angles I've seen, this still looks like the route that's best for me.

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Tried to post that last bit earlier but Blogger was having problems. In fact, Blogger's still having problems and the only way I was able to post this was by installing a new web browser (Opera)(so far I liked Internet Explorer better). And I still can't seem to publish anything. So blah.

Awakened by Trisa from a dream wherein I and Gary Oldman starred in a reality television show having to do with us stranded on a cul-de-sac with no roads leading in and out of it. I seem to remember that the show also involved zombies, but mostly it was just us wandering fearfully around.

So Trisa and I went for coffee at Parkway Plaza, which was fun except that the mall does bad things for Trisa's mood. But basically a good experience to wake up to.

One of my poems got accepted by the Acorn Review last night, which was kind of surprising as it was a strange, less-orthodox-than-is-generally-liked sort of poem. And it's also a poem that I have conflicting feelings about but these days I'm starting to think that I have no head for poetry. I can't even tell when I do something right.

Monday, December 08, 2003

Dreamt I was a vampire and being a vampire involved playing elaborate games of levitating "tag" with other vampires. Once you'd tagged another vampire, you were no longer a vampire.

So after I'd tagged a pretty vampiress in a purple robe, I dropped to a concrete path where I found a microwave and a basket full of pidgeons. It occured to me that if I put a few pidgeons in the microwave and turned the machine on, I would eventually melt the creatures. But it seemed I also dimly remembered that if I heated them in short bursts, then gave them breaks, I could get them to have sex. And this I did.

...

I almost blacked out yester-day. Never happened to me before. It was very interesting . . . I was kneeling in front of some Lovecraft books, noticing how many times the same stories appeared in different collections, and when I stood, the world suddenly started to fade behind reddish blackness. I remember thinking, "Hey, I'm still able to think while this is going on . . . Wow, I can't see anything. I hope I don't bump into anything."

Afterwards, I got to thinking about how peculiarly tired I've been lately and how I've had an even harder time than usual keeping my thoughts in order. I wondered if I was laking vital nutrients. I walked to Tim's work and asked him what he thought, but he had no better advise than, "Eat meat."

Sunday, December 07, 2003

I hate Cosco. And I really hate Trader Joes. I don't wanna go to that snake-den of horrid, uptight people! Don't make me go back, I don't care if there're some cool things on their shelves.

I suppose I did get an awful lot of orange juice from Trader Joes . . . But goodness if that place isn't filled with what William S. Burroughs might call "decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces."

...

Viewers got to see Hawkgirl's face on Justice League last night. She and Green Lantern finally admitted their feelings for each other and so Lantern reached forward and gently removed that feathery headpiece . . . and damn was it ever sexy. I was turned on. It was almost better than watching him undress her, especially as she's much prettier without her mask. I was beginning to wonder if that thing even was a mask or if it was simply part of her head. She didn't even take it off when she met Cthulhu (I know, I don't know why she would except that Cthulhu really deserved more respect).

Saturday, December 06, 2003

Well, this room's a mess and I don't wanna clean it.

I took it apart last night looking for Goodfellas, which Trisa and I decided to watch. She and I hung out for a bit last night, going to City Delicatessan, Off The Record, and Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. We took her car, the floor of which was paved in audio tapes.

Did eventually find Goodfellas, which is a great movie of course. Not the sort one gets tired of. And it was nice seeing Trisa again. She's not the sort one gets tired of either.

I'm supposed to go to my parents' to-night for dinner because they've gotten a new dog--don't ask me how that works.

Friday, December 05, 2003

In Lake Arrowhead, in addition to lots of Caitlin R. Kiernan, I also read the last Arthur Conan-Doyle Sherlock Holmes story that I had not read. The Adventure of the Retired Colourman didn't feel like the final Holmes story. Unlike the stories that closely preceded it, such as The Adventure of the Lion's Mane and His Last Bow, which were stories that featured significant nostalgic peculiarities, The Adventure of the Retired Colourman was a resoundingly good return to form, giving one of the more enjoyable tales of Holmes's powerful deductive techniques put to use.

Of course, I want more. So it was with no small amount of excitement that I last night anticipated watching Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes from 1970.

I knew that Billy Wilder was a brilliant film maker. You might remember me glowing about The Apartment, Double Indemnity, and Some Like It Hot. It was only a few weeks ago that I first learned about The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and the idea that such a terrific director had made a Sherlock Holmes movie had me salivating like a waterfall.

The movie is not based on any of Arthur Conan-Doyle's stories. In fact, various descriptions that I read of the film seemed to indicate that the movie was primarily concerned with the idea that Holmes might have been homosexual and in love with Dr. Watson.

I was a little bothered by what this seemed to suggest. I worried (foolishly, as it turned out) that the movie would be a juvenile melodrama about some repressed passion in Holmes. That the movie would postulate that homosexuality was the entire reason for Holmes's distrust of women. This bothered me because, honestly, it seems absolutely boring and boorish. The concept seems to leap at an irksome presumption--oh, he doesn't like women! He must be gay!

I was always far more interested in the idea that Holmes was unlike any other person and that he was compelled by obsessions and passions outside the realm of simplistic, orthodox character studies.

Anyway . . . I decided that I would trust Wilder, who had not let me down in the past, and simply watch the damn movie and even look forward to it.

I was not disappointed, I'm happy to say.

It turns out to only be the juvenile individuals at Yahoo! movies and other places who think the movie is all about gay Holmes.

Wilder and co-writer I.A.L Diamond give a more complicated portrait of the sleuth that suggests an inner torment that is very, very quiet behind vigour for brilliantly solving extraordinary crimes. It's an intriguing and endearing view of the man in the midst of a story involving ballet, canaries, and the Loch Ness Monster.

The trademark wittiness of Wilder's dialogue is put to good effect here and I especially liked Watson who, played by Colin Blakely, came across as a sort of a mixture of Jack Lemmon, Colm Meaney, and a very enthusiastic puppy. It was simultaneously novel and, er, true enough to Conan-Doyle's Watson.

Robert Stephens played Holmes in a manner that was a little more laconic and sane than I'm used to Holmes being. But it was not really a departure from Conan-Doyle's Holmes, and worked well for the subject matter of the film. Of course, I still would rather have seen Jeremy Brett.

Christopher Lee's in the film as Sherlock's brother Mycroft and, as usual, the guy has great presence. Although I think Mycroft was written as a slightly more sinister character than Conan-Doyle originally intended. And I also wonder if Queen Victoria was really as simple-minded as she seemed in the movie.

Other than that, my only complaint about the movie is that Sherlock wasn't as smart as he usually is. I've never been able to reach solutions before Holmes in any of the Conan-Doyle stories, but I found myself deducing some things faster than Wilder's Holmes. Such as the straight tracks in the dust which at first confounded Holmes's but which I immediately recognised as wheelchair tracks. But I guess this just illustrates that Wilder's is a different kid of cleverness.

Apparently, Wilder and Diamond worked for twelve years on the screenplay and there really is a sense of respect for the original stories. The movie was originally supposed to be a three hour collection of four Holmes episodes, but unfortunately the studio saw fit to cut it down to only two stories (for a running time of about two hours) when test audiences found the movie to be too "episodic."

So, thanks to those bright folks, about a third of this brilliant film is entirely lost--it seems only some of the footage has survived, and only without its dialogue track and with blurred-out nudity (it was saved for a possible television version).

But, as it is, it is still very worth watching indeed.

...

I exhausted myself at the mall yester-day encountering unprecedented difficulty in Christmas shopping. For most of the people on my list, I could not even begin to conceive of what to buy for them. I did, amazingly enough, find a pair of sunglasses for myself. It's terribly difficult finding sunglasses that don't look revoltingly stupid but, astonishingly, there were several in a store at the mall for only two dollars!

They're large, and blessedly round. I suppose they look like goggles. Maybe a little silly but I'll take just about anything in place of those moronic, elongated gecko-eyed things proliferating the market. Oy. Doesn't anyone look at pictures of John Lennon and say "Hey, that looks great!" anymore?

Thursday, December 04, 2003

My lip hurts.

This room's a mess and I gotta get my things picked up before I leave as the maid is coming.

Maybe I'll do my Christmas shopping to-day . . . And shoestrings. I need shoestrings. The string on my right shoe finally broke--this particular pair of sturdy strings has been carried through three pairs of shoes. So I think I shall buy the same kind.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

It'd be nice if there was toilet paper around here, I really think. I guess I know what my first errand shall be to-day.

I've just been looking over a story I submitted to the Acorn Review that was rejected. Being in the class, on the editorial staff, is supposed to give you a sort of advantage as no one in the class is supposed to know who wrote the pieces they're reviewing. So you're supposed to benefit from unabashed comments. Well, in my case, unfortunately, the reverse seems to be true--for my stories, people tend to unabashedly reserve their comments. I still have no idea why this story was rejected. The only real complaint it got was that there were some spelling errors--which is funny because me and Microsoft Word have as yet to find any spelling errors. Although that part of the mystery could be that no one in the class likes the UK dictionary, which I prefer to use for aesthetic reasons. I bet they probably don't know that "realise" can be spelt with an "s".

I suppose the only explanation I can think of is that the story is just plain bad. Not for any isolatable reason . . . It's just not good. It's a bad idea. Or maybe it's that most of the people in the class have vastly different tastes than I do. I was the only one, after all, who voted "no" on the very revolting story about the mother wanting to fuck her dead son (I doubt the author would agree with me on that synopsis. If he or she did, I might like the story).

...

I met my sister's new boyfriend yester-day. He wants to be a movie director--apparently he's already done his own little film complete with a stunt man and a stand-in hand. But really, this guy--Nathan--seemed more like a producer than a director to me. I'm not sure why.

I met him at my parent's house when he came to pick my sister up for a date. So I listened to him talk to my parents. The ever-chuckling Nathan talked about his car--After saying he wasn't any kind of car-mechanic, he went into discussing how he had just changed the something-gasket and the valve-something. He and my dad then talked car-Greek.

My mother approvingly noted that he and my sister looked like a Gap advertisement standing next to eachother . . . and I listened to my dad speak with pride about buying Matchbox 20 and Nickelback CDs.

And if there's one thing this post is starting to make abundantly clear to me, it's that I think most of the people I interact with regularly have bad taste.

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

So far there're around fifty things I want to do to-day. So I probably won't do any of them because I spit in the face stuffs.

Well, no, I'm actually gonna do stuff.

Yester-day, in case you're wondering, was a lot of walking again. I think I startled a woman when I spontaneously helped her lift her baby's stroller over the trolley steps. It only occured to me after I had sat back down and'd been gazing out the window a bit that me--total young stranger in sinister black hat--rushing wordlessly forward to kneel in front of her infant, grasping the bottom of its stroller and lifting with all my strength, might've been unsettling. So much for the happy fantasy of the world of friendly neighbourhood people all about, ready to help those in need.

Was I complaining about the three cans of coke the other day? Ironic, now that they're gone and I miss them.

I'll have to get more. And video tapes too. Oh yes, and maybe hair gel.

I guess I haven't mentioned this here yet--on Sunday, when I was anxious all day and crazy, I started cutting my hair. I cut it a lot. It's very short now, but not so bad looking. I'm actually kind of proud of myself. But I think I might want hair gel.

Monday, December 01, 2003

I think I've gotten a cold. Um. Yes. I have.

I watched A Streetcar Named Desire yester-day which might partially explain my gloomy perseptions of love and reality at the time. I knew I'd feel better by this morning and I do. Something about just waking up makes you feel like you don't give a fuck, after all . . .

I also watched Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious and I finally got that Cary Grant looks awesome in a suit or a tuxedo. Nearly twenty years before the first James Bond film, Grant was already doing what most people would put down to Bond. Ingrid Bergman was also great . . . Ever since my aunt informed me that Ingrid Bergman is Isabella Rossalini's mother, I haven't been able to stop marvelling at the resemblance between the two women. Which has caused me to think about David Lynch's motivations in casting Rossalini in his movies, especially considering Laura Harring's resemblance to Rita Hayworth, not to mention his casting of the actual Anne Miller.